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Facebook revenue beats estimates; discloses antitrust probe
- bliteben 7y agoThere is no fucking way they have 2.41 B monthly active users. How are their executives not going to jail for claiming this?
- patricklorio 7y agoDo they define "monthly active users"?
- gt565k 7y agoProbably a combination of Facebook, Facebook messenger, whatsapp, instagram, and god knows what else. Maybe anything using facebook login counts as an activity. I.e. people that login to spotify with FB, but never use FB.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sharkmerry 7y agoIf you click a like button, on any website. Thats an MAU.
- cameronbrown 7y agoThat still requires having an account and likely a shedload of your data on FB being tracked.
- sofaofthedamned 7y agoI assume that's the case, but is it true? Does it include people who have a FB cookie?
- cjhopman 7y agoI don't think that's true. Their old 10Q said this: > An active user is someone who visited Facebook.com and logged-in (or has been logged in) or who has taken an action with a Facebook feature (for example, clicked a ‘like button.) The current ones say this: > a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our Messenger application (and is also a registered Facebook user), in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement. Clicking a like button is no longer sufficient to count as an active user. I believe there were articles about this when they changed it, but I'm not sure.
- cjhopman 7y agoYeah, here's an article from 2015 when they changed the definition: https://www.adweek.com/digital/monthly-active-users-definition-revised/ https://www.adweek.com/digital/monthly-active-users-definiti...
- sharkmerry 7y agothanks! I was not aware.
- bliteben 7y agoFrom their 1Q 10Q (2Q is not up yet): . We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our Messenger application (and is also a registered Facebook user), in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement. MAUs are a measure of the size of our global active user community on Facebook.
- ThundaUp 7y agoFrom the slide it says "The numbers for DAUs and MAUs do not include Instagram, WhatsApp, or Oculus users unless they would otherwise qualify as such users, respectively, based on their other activities on Facebook."
- spullara 7y agoWhy do you think that? They own all the most popular platforms outside of China.
- TheSoftwareGuy 7y agoI wonder if "people who visit a website with a facebook tracking script that have been successfully fingerprinted" count as a user. If so I could believe that number
- threeseed 7y agoYou do understand these documents are vetted by accountants, lawyers, compliance officers etc. It is highly unlikely they are falsely claiming those numbers. What is likely is that they are including loose interactions e.g. OAuth Login as MAUs.
- mtmail 7y agohttps://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monthly-active-user-mau.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monthly-active-user-mau... "Facebook revised its definition of MAU: It would no longer include "third-party pings"—that is, people who are not active Facebook users, but who share content only via another site that's integrated within the Facebook login."
- bliteben 7y agoLook at their 10Q yourself https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=13374999 https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-details/defau...
- darawk 7y agoWhat is it that you think the 10Q says that validates your claim that these numbers are false?
- bliteben 7y agoWe define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or used our Messenger application (and is also a registered Facebook user), in the last 30 days as of the date of measurement. MAUs are a measure of the size of our global active user community on Facebook. They do mention that they think 11% of their accounts are duplicates. But even then I think the numbers smell off.
- rolltiide 7y agoYou act like big ‘vetted’ companies have never restated earnings for prior quarters years after the fact It looks fishy
- bootlooped 7y agoThat number includes bots.
- the_watcher 7y agoNo, it does not.
- arrty88 7y agoAll my friends' pets have accounts. Plus celeb "official" + "personal". + Brand pages.
- bitxbit 7y agoI don’t get this metric especially after they specifically disclosed that their metrics could be off by as much as 5% last quarter from “fake” accounts (which they oddly didn’t disclose financially).
- artemisyna 7y agoSee slide 18. :) https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/Q2/Q2-2019-Earnings-Presentation-07.24.2019.pdf https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/Q2...
- XCSme 7y agoThat includes Whatsapp and Instagram, right? Instagram is pretty hype atm.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- samsonradu 7y agoJust for some context, more than half of those users are in Asia (India, Indonesia etc.) https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-...
- ddillon 7y agoThe stats on that page only add up to 1.076B
- axaxs 7y agoI'd wager they have 2.41 B monthly active accounts, but not users. My mom has something like 3 accounts. Where my wife is from, everyone seems to have at least 2 accounts, sometimes many more. And I'm sure millions, if not hundreds of millions, are the same. I wouldn't be surprised if their MAU surpassed the population of many locales, but they'd never admit as much.
- RussianCow 7y agoI'm curious, what's the use case for having multiple Facebook accounts? Presumably you're talking about actual user accounts, and not Pages.
- axaxs 7y agoMy wife's friends/family use them as a form of silo'ing different groups of people. I haven't used FB in years but there used to not really be a good way to do that, at least. That would be my guess. For example, my wife is friends with her own sister 3 times as 3 slightly varying names. I won't get into my mom's use case. I think she mainly uses them to friend with and snoop on people. Weird lady.
- anbop 7y agoI use one for my personal use. Another for video calls for my kid. Another for snooping on girls I slept with when I was single. A fourth for apps that want third party login.
- bliteben 7y agoThey say that duplicate or "false" accounts make up 10% of their total numbers. They also are effectively banned in China and Russia to my understanding. So they are claiming that more than 1/4 of the whole world (even the undeveloped parts) use their website once a month even accounting for these false users.
- the_watcher 7y agoFacebook is blocked in China, not Russia. However, there are plenty of Chinese MAUs when factoring VPNs and those who travel abroad. Basically, you can subtract the total Chinese population from the world population and assume you've properly discounted the global population to account for the few other countries where it's banned and factored in those who travel or connect via VPN (Iran, North Korea, etc).
- cm2012 7y ago"I know nothing about this subject and/or area, but nonetheless strongly believe people involved need to go to jail"
- the_watcher 7y agoSeriously asking: why not? Do you just not believe that scale is possible? I hadn't thought about it, but let's make a few assumptions and see how realistic that is. * 7.7B people in the world. * Subtract 1.4B people in China (even though plenty of those people actually have FB and login when abroad or via VPN, there are more countries where Facebook is blocked, plus outliers where usage is low). * We don't want to count people who are really young. There's also a decay in popularity related entirely to age. I'm going to use ages 15-64, simply because the World Bank made it easy to get an estimate: ~65% of the global population[0]. * We have (7.7-1.4) x .65 = ~4.01B people between 15 and 64 years old in countries with Facebook. Given that Facebook growth skews towards countries with younger populations, I'd say this is a hard floor on what I'll call the "eligible Facebook population". 50% is high at first glance, but keep in mind that we've already excluded most of the low hanging fruit that would make it definitionally impossible for someone to use Facebook. I'd say their number is high, but not spit-take high. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.1564.TO.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.1564.TO.ZS
- Nelson69 7y agoPlus there are a ton of over 64 folks on there... Riddle me this: why would they lie? Shareholders could sue, since they try to infer some value from it there could be other legal consequences. If they only had, say 1billion daily active users instead of 1.56billion, would that really water their value down much? I don't see a competitor coming to eat their lunch that would rationalize lying about that stuff.
- the_watcher 7y agoFlat growth numbers would water down their value, particularly in developed markets, as we saw last July. But more to your point, these number are so astoundingly high, and have been for years that you're really asking "why would they ever have overestimated these numbers?", which gets to the same point.
- polishTar 7y agoAlso, why would they even care about reporting high numbers? Facebook's leadership doesn't have any of the typical business pressures to please investors. Leadership (Zuckerberg) already holds majority voting power, and Facebook is fully self sufficient financially (no concerns about needing to raise more capital at poor prices).
- miguelmota 7y agoIf by 'monthly active' it means someone that checks the facebook app at least once a month, then it's surely a plausible claim.
- anbop 7y agoWhy would they lie? These numbers hurt their stock price because they suggest that future growth is capped.
- pier25 7y agoIt's totally anecdotal, but most people I know have either stopped using Facebook or are much less active than previously. The few teenagers I know don't even use it at all. I guess all that growth must come from countries that recently got into Facebook.
- basch 7y agoDaily Users have grown only 5m in 2 years, in the US/Canada. About 51% of US/C check facebook or messenger every day, and 67% every month. So 16% of people check it but less than daily.
- shados 7y agousage has shifted less from "posting baby pictures omg omg omg" to more facebook groups and business pages and stuff. Which is likely better for Facebook and exactly what they want (well, they'd probably rather have both, but if they can only have one..)
- mrgreenfur 7y agoOr from fraudulent accounts, or both!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- uwuhn 7y agoInstagram
- deanstag 7y agoI'm not sure if the report includes Whatsapp, but that should be a huge portion of active users.
- Nelson69 7y agoTheir MAUs and DAUs exclude insta and whatsapp. Bottom of page 4 of their 10Q. I wonder if there is sort of the uncool factor going on. People might "use" FB but it's not cool to post very often or admit to it. 1.56B DAUs, that's 20% of the planet, if you include whatsapp, I think it's staggeringly more. Either they are somehow lying about their numbers and risking potential shareholder lawsuits or it is like shopping at Walmart or eating at McDonald's where the "cool kids" never admit to it but very clearly a good sized chunk of them still do. Lying about the numbers just seems sort of silly to me. It's odd, none of my same age friends post much on FB; it's vacation brag pictures, various life events or children's milestones sort of stuff. At the same time, messenger might be the best way to contact many of them, better than SMS.
- baby 7y agoThe title mentions an antitrust probe but the article says nothing about it. What is that about?
- tareqak 7y agoThe last part of the opening sentence has it (emphasis mine): Facebook Inc (FB.O) beat analysts’ estimates for revenue on Wednesday, even as the world’s largest social network agreed to pay a $5 billion fine over data privacy and announced a U.S. antitrust investigation.
- nothis 7y agoOddly, I see less issues with Facebook than with Google. Facebook has a tight grip on social media, but then there's also Twitter. facebook.com is dying long-term (though Instagram is picking some of that up) and they're not nearly as vertically integrated as Google is, for example (browser, operating system, email, video streaming, maps,...). In the current political climate, I don't see an antitrust investigation ever leading to any major impact but it's almost inevitable, over the coming decade or so, to see a ton of regulation and forced splits for tech giants. The current system simply can't be healthy.
- reaperducer 7y agoOddly, I see less issues with Facebook than with Google. Patience. Everyone will get their turn.
- tareqak 7y agoThe last paragraph in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/facebook-says-it-s-being-investigated-by-the-ftc-over-antitrust https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/facebook-... says that the FTC will be dealing with Facebook and Amazon while the Justice department will deal with Apple and Alphabet.
- yalogin 7y agoFacebook has the same problem the Republican party has. Their users/supporters are all dying and less and less people are signing up. However they are still a force to reckon with and generate a lot of cash.
- throwaway122378 7y agoHow’s life in your Bay Area bubble?
- adjkant 7y agoIt's not hard to look at the age breakdown for each of the political parties and see this checks out. https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-among-demographic-groups/ https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-af...
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoHaven't Republicans traditionally trended older? If there are enough voters who change parties as they age, does it matter that one party tends older while the other trends younger?
- adjkant 7y agoI hear that claim a lot but if you look at the link I posted under the "A wide – and growing – generational divide in partisanship" heading, it doesn't appear to actually be the case. If that were true you'd likely see a much bigger pull to republicans as Gen X aged during the studied period (94-17). Also doesn't explain the sharp millennial pull to democrats at all.
- tomp 7y agoThis assumes that people's political affiliations don't change as they age. Given by the amount of youth that support communism I sincerely hope you're wrong.
- newsreview1 7y agoI'm betting that an FTC antitrust probe will have no effect on other nations using FB. I lived in Brazil, and it was typically a year or two behind the trending here in the US. While US use of FB is down in their previous major demographics, it is spiking internationally.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tareqak 7y agoMore specific news about the antitrust probe: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/facebook-says-it-s-being-investigated-by-the-ftc-over-antitrust https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/facebook-... .
- cryptica 7y agoI came to the conclusion that there is definitely an ad network listening in to private conversations on users' phones and that network probably belongs to Facebook. Recently, I was cleaning my apartment and I moved a heavy piece of furniture to vacuum the dust underneath it and I found a set of clear plastic retainers for teeth. They must have belonged to the previous tenant who had moved out about 6 months earlier. The retainers looked like they were 3D printed (lots of small ridges on them) and I told my wife that when I had mine (a decade earlier), they were kind of expensive but these ones were 3D printed so they must be a lot cheaper and we can probably just throw them away. The conversation lasted no more than a minute. Next day, I was browsing yahoo.com and the ad banner had a picture of a clear plastic retainer and was advertising 3D printed retainers. Neither me not my wife had posted anything about the retainers anywhere or discussed it with anyone else or even looked it up on any website (neither of us cares about the subject at all; neither dentistry nor 3D printing). This is the first time I ever saw advertising related to dentistry or 3D printing. This is not the first time that I've experienced a creepy ad but it was definitely the most disturbing because: 1. It was an extremely specific and niche subject matter which does not relate to me in any way; it was based on an extremely unlikely freak occurrence. 2. I only spoke about it with my wife in an extremely casual way. Neither of us looked it up online on any website afterwards (we verified). The subject matter only occupied our thoughts for an extremely small amount of time. 3. The ad came up the next day after having the conversation.
- kevstev 7y agoI have had similar stuff come up, the most cut and dried example I could pinpoint was when on a Sunday morning, Meet the Press, which after the 2016 election I had started watching each week, was pushed off in place of a golf tournament that week. I got distracted, and started just doing some stuff around the house while it was on in the background. I have no interest in golf, I have never searched or cared about golf in any way whatsoever. Yet, the next few weeks I started getting ads about golf stuff in FB. The only other real explanation would be that Verizon is selling my viewing information and this is somehow being linked back to my FB account.
- ejwessel 7y agoOther's are definitely experiencing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps